Paul Hampden Dougherty: A Life in Coastal Impressionism Early Life and Education Born: September 6, 1877, in Brooklyn, New York. Dougherty came from a prominent family; his father, J. Hampden Dougherty, was a respected attorney and legal scholar. Despite his father’s wishes for him to follow a legal path, Paul demonstrated an early passion for art, sketching constantly from a young age. He graduated from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute in 1896 with some artistic training and later earned a law degree from New York Law School, passing the bar but ultimately choosing art as his profess…